08/06/2023
Why thousands of Nigerians stayed back in Sudan.
By Mo Sani Aliyu
Darfur, Sudan
When news of the conflict in Sudan broke, I was still in Nigeria planning to fly into Khartoum's city centre airport.
I had just got my Sudan visa 48 hours before that, and there was this sinking feeling in my stomach that translated to:
"Oh no! Why is this happening now? How on earth am I going to get into the country?"
Seeing how quickly the conflict unfolded, and the closure of all the country's airports, I nearly gave up on returning to Sudan.
But a few hours later, i realized the enormity of the crisis, at least from the Nigerian perspective. The first critical thought that came to my mind then was "How the millions of Nigerians and thousands of Nigerian students in that country will get out unscathed".
Yes there are millions of Nigerians living in Sudan.
The Nigerian government itself, through its own Nigerians in Diaspora Commission says: "Over three million Nigerians live in Sudan."
It also said efforts, "are being made to evacuate as many Nigerians as possible."
So as expected, strident calls from parents and what Nigerians call 'stakeholders' then forced the Nigerian government to act.
A hastily organized evacuation exercise was arranged, in true Nigerian fashion. Several agencies including the Nigerian Embassy in Khartoum worked feverishly at crossroads and sometimes against the interests of the very students they were supposed to rescue.
But that is a story that has already been told, so I won't waste your time repeating it.
Fast forward to mid May this year, all is calm at the home front. All Nigerian students have been evacuated from Sudan, and parents and the 'stakeholders' are sated and the chatter has died off.
The only nagging issue was what to do with the thousands of students who were returned home. Everyone's attention was fixed on absorbing these students into existing Nigerian universities, an exercise I personally think is fraught with its own challenges.
No one is critically looking at Sudan again, after all ALL our people are back home, right?
Wrong.
Not all of them have been rescued. There are still thousands of Nigerians, students included, inside strife stricken Sudan.
How do I know? Because I have met many of them in several cities, especially here in western part of the country.
The questions that first came to my mind when I saw some of them were:
- What are these Nigerians still doing here?
- Why haven't they gone home?
- Could they have been abandoned by Nigerian officials?
So I proceeded to ask them these same questions, and a few more!
Here are my findings:
There are basically two groups of Nigerians still inside Sudan - those that chose to stay, and those that want to leave but simply can't do so.
The first group has voluntarily decided to stay here because its members have certain "vested" interests here.
Some of them have family and businesses here. They say leaving everything behind was not an option, even though it is clearly dangerous to stay back.
Surprisingly, I have met here some Nigerians from the Yoruba and Igbo ethnic groups doing business in Sudan. A very unlikely and surprising finding.
But as expected, the bulk of Nigerians I have met here are from the Hausa, Fallata and Kanuri ethnic groups.
The second group of Nigerians say they are not staying back here by choice. They told me they were, and still are actively looking for ways to leave.
Why did they not leave when the Nigerian government sent planes to evacuate them?
Some of them say they simply could not make it to the evacuation centres in Wadi Halfa, Arqeen, Khartoum"s two universities (International University of Africa and Al Razi University), and Port Sudan.
They say traveling through RSF controlled territory from their locations in western Sudan was firstly very dangerous and secondly terribly expensive.
The fare from, say the city of Zalingei, to the nearest and safest evacuation center in Port Sudan costs over 100,000 Sudanese pounds (about 150,000 naira) per passenger.
They told me they simply couldn't afford to get there.
There was also the likelihood that armed criminal gangs would have abducted many of them along the remote untarred country roads that link Sudan's vast "wilayaat".
Also some Nigerians do not have any documentation to prove they are Nigerian nationals, so they simply stayed back here knowing making the journey to Port Sudan was likely to impoverish them with no certainly of getting home.
There's one gentleman I met whose case is truly exceptional though. He's clearly suffering from mental health issues. He's been living in Sudan for over ten years in a hut right inside one of Sudan's largest cities.
His case broke my heart, and I actually wept after seeing the condition he's in. People call him Malam Ka Lura, which roughly translated from Hausa means "Mr. Have you noticed?".
He told me how he came here to study in one of Sudan's universities but couldn't return home afterwards - due to the terrible nighmares he says he has that "his hands will disappear", and that he was likely to lose his comprehension of life as he knows it once he returns home.
He is clearly delusional. I think he may not have taken a bath in months (possibly more), even though in conversation, he is lucid and coherent.
Residents of the area he "lives" in say he is a very intelligent man who can fix any broken mechanical appliances.
I also met some Nigerian students studying for their PhDs in the city of Madani in central Sudan just south of Khartoum, who say they chose to stay back in Sudan because they simply couldn't finance their return here if, and when the universities re-open.
There are also many Chadians, Nigeriens, and Ethiopians who are facing similar challenges in Sudan.
All these groups of Nigerians, and non-Nigerians have one thing in common though.
They have a strong conviction that Sudan will somehow pull back from the brink of implosion, and that somehow, their lives will return to normal.
Their Sudanese hosts are a hundred percent with them on holding on to these thin strands of hope.
Tasha Mai Inganci
